[Intro: Announcer & Republic]
[Announcer]
Smile for the camera. Stand on the mark.
The joke gets better when the room gets dark.

[Republic]
My makeup cracks beneath the heat.
Someone has bolted wheels beneath my feet.

[Verse 1]
They wheel me out in borrowed blue,
Pin thirteen stars where fifty grew.
The host misreads my founding lines,
The band hits brass on all the signs.
A family waits behind a gate;
He mocks their names. The laughter’s late.
A judge is threatened, clerks are named—
The cue card says the crowd’s entertained.

[Pre-Chorus]
A guardrail cracks. The drummer taps.
The red light orders louder claps.
The cruelest line receives its cue.
The camera turns the joke on you.

[Chorus]
Play the laugh track for a republic.
Cue the grin when the guardrails crack.
Make the cruel look bright and public,
Then sell the silence back.
Play the laugh track, count the claps,
While a country disappears between the gaps.

[Verse 2]
A paper closes, short on loans;
The monologue mocks its empty phones.
A teacher hides a history page;
The crowd applauds the edited age.
A worker falls beneath a load;
The host attacks the “lazy” code.
The sponsor’s logo fills the wall.
No one can hear the trapdoor fall.

[Chorus]
Play the laugh track for a republic.
Cue the grin when the guardrails crack.
Make the cruel look bright and public,
Then sell the silence back.
Play the laugh track, count the claps,
While a country disappears between the gaps.

[Piano Interlude: detuned upright piano, crooked motif, late muted trumpet]

[Bridge: Republic]
[Republic]
I was never pure, and never whole.
My laws bore chains; my wealth took toll.
Do not defend me as a shrine—
Defend the right to change my line.

[Breakdown]
No punch line now.
No painted grin.
The trapdoor waits.
The boards grow thin.

[Final Chorus]
Stop the laugh track for the republic.
Name the crack before it spreads.
Cruelty is neither bright nor comic;
It leaves a list of names and beds.
Stop the laugh track, stop the claps.
Pull the country back from between the gaps.

[Outro]
The red light dies. No laughter starts.
The republic walks, dragging broken parts.